 Hello, I'm Martin Weller and I'm going to talk to you today about metaphors of EdTech. So first of all about metaphors. They play a very key part in our conceptual system and I think we can thank the work of Lackoff and Johnson who wrote the book Metaphors Relivable. They're really helping us reframe how we think about metaphors. They're not just for poets, for literature. They're kind of a very fundamental part of how we think and interact with the world. Metaphors have real power, so they help us understand something new. So if there's a domain we don't understand, we often take a domain we do understand and map certain elements across to help us understand that new domain. There's also the idea of generative metaphor where we have two different domains. There's this kind of dialogue between them that helps us understand both of them in better detail. And there's also this really interesting idea that metaphors help us shape the solution. So in psychology they gave two different groups of subjects, an account where in one crime was presented in terms of metaphor of a disease in a community, and in another way crime was presented as a metaphor of a monster, sort of as a community. Then they asked those two different groups to come up with solutions for how to deal with the crime. And depending on which metaphor they've been exposed to they came up with different solutions. And so I think turning to education technology I think there's kind of three ways I'm interested in that metaphors can help us. The first is this idea of just understanding something. You know education technology is still quite new and you feel first or exploring it. We're not quite sure how different technologies impact what they can mean for learning, what they can mean for institutions, what they can mean for education or generally. And so metaphors allow us to sort of take something we do understand and apply to this new domain. There's also this idea of what I call defense. I think going back to the idea that metaphors help us shape a solution. So often you'll see accounts often from companies are trying to sell you something or commentators in certain fields and they'll present it to you in a very powerful metaphor which then makes their solution seem like the obvious solution. I think just being aware that you'll be presented with a metaphor and how to react against that is very useful. And lastly but certainly at least the idea of fun. Or metaphors allow us to reason in a very kind of creative manner about technology. Often it's a very kind of dry theme for education technology. I think just having some playfulness there can be very helpful. Speaking of playfulness you can go to this site and play around with what a metaphor generator that I created that creates random educational technology metaphors for you. So if you don't like it just click a button and get that one. And thanks to Alan Naveen for helping me develop that. So I've developed and I've written a book called Metaphors of EdTech published by the Basque University Press. It's openly licensed free to download coming later this month in September. So you can get that look and download it there. And thanks to Brian Mathers for the fantastic artwork on the cover. I'm a big Jaws fan. There's a Jaws metaphor. Part of the reason I wanted to write the book was as well as this kind of just fun thing of exploring the ideas. Because we went through the online period following the pandemic when all education shifted online and education technology moved to center stage. But then there's also been a kind of backlash against that. Thanks for that work during the pandemic. But now everybody get back onto campus. And there's this kind of feeling that only the lecturers the real way of education or what we might call a lecture deficit model for everything else. It was never as good as the lecture. So you see quotes like this one here from an article I read. So the main reason why the distance learning education didn't replace traditional model is that online learning just isn't as good. And I think what's revealed to me is a kind of real lack of alternative models that people have for thinking about education, what online education can be. But they only have the lecture. And it's never as good as the lecture. So that's why I want to think that metaphors provide a new way to think about it. So in the book there's a wide range of metaphors. Lots of things to choose from. This history of Welsh castles, music, anthropology. So there'll be some in there you like and there'll be some you want. There's a pick and mix. So an example of one is, I don't have time to go through these much detail, but video assisted refereeing and learning analytics. So video assisted refereeing came into playing football as you may know. I think it's interesting because although it seemed inevitable that it would be used, everyone wanted it to be used. It also led to certain problems we didn't foresee. For example, the kind of really minute measurements of the computers allow to what is essentially a very human enterprise. So you get these kind of decisions where someone is ruled to be offside by like a toenail or something. And really the game is ever meant to be played on that. And similarly I think for learning analytics in education, you can think about shifting students' performance by point one over here and doing something over there, tweaking this kind of stuff. And that's not really how education works. And I think it kind of helps and it undermines the human in the system. And so I'd like video assisted refereeing and I'm not saying that it's not going to be implemented. Learning analytics I think just is again seemed inevitable, but it needs to be implemented very kind of sympathetically. The VLEs, an area that's rich for metaphors and a paper here by Farrell, Costello and Donlon looked at the different types of metaphors. They analyzed different papers and kind of underlined metaphors that people use to talk about VLEs. I think that's interesting because depending on your kind of subconscious metaphor about a VLE, it will affect how you interact with it. Another kind of common metaphor we have is whatever the latest technology is, the latest Silicon Valley business model, people say let's apply that to education. We've had Uber for education, Netflix for learning, Airbnb, all these kind of things. And it's tied up this idea of unbundling often by taking the different elements of education apart. It's the idea will be oh just like you can bring a taxi or order a taxi by your mobile phone, you can just get some learning as you need it and get people out there. These metaphors usually very conveniently ignore all the quite dodgy labour practices and business models of these organisations. But more importantly, they also ignore why this model is not like education. So if we take Uber, it's essentially getting a taxi ride. That's a very short term thing compared to education, which is often a very long time frame interaction. Education is very diverse geographically and by disciplining ways, getting a taxi is pretty similar wherever you go. Being licensed off of formal credit is a very complex process. So anyone with a driving license can become an Uber driver. The idea of Mina's paradox where as a learner you don't know what it is that you need to know or as you know what it is you want from a taxi driver. Learning is often a social activity where you get the taxis off to a solitary one. And education is already engaging with online learning mobile delivery. So it's not clear what they're trying to solve here. So I think just it's worth questioning when you're presented with these kind of quite powerful metaphors. And that leads me to think about the dangers of metaphors. They are very powerful and that's part of their attractingness, but also at least think that they can be manipulated in certain ways with them. And often go unnoticed. So they're kind of presented in a metaphor with a very obvious solution and you don't realize it before you've signed up to whatever that solution is. It can also exclude certain groups. I mean, one of the power of them is that if you'll get what the metaphor is, then it helps you understand the new domain. But if you don't know that initial metaphor, it can make you feel even more confused. So far as to use a metaphor for a children's TV program in the UK in the 80s, certain people would get that, but other people would feel completely excluded by the use of that metaphor. They're imperfect. They're not the same as the target domain. Otherwise, they would be that target domain. So you need to always be careful of which bits don't map across. And I think almost for any metaphor, you could find one that says it's a bit the opposite thing for what you're trying to claim. So always just be aware of that. But what they do allow, I think, is kind of an element of creativity and playfulness. So often we've been interacting with educators, technologists, band up and spreadsheets and roadmaps and implementation and all those kind of things. But I think there's going to room for creative thinking in those. And I think just thinking about a metaphor and how it makes us relate to a different technology, kind of makes us think in a kind of more critical manner. What is this technology doing for us? What can it do for our learners? Why is it like this thing? Why is it not like this thing? And I think that also helps humanize their relationship with technology by using metaphors that are meaningful to us or to our groups. And it makes us think about this technology in a different way. And it also just encourages discussion. If everyone has discussion about technology, just propose a metaphor and someone will come along and tell you why your metaphor is completely rubbish or extend it in kind of ways that you hadn't anticipated. So you might want to think in your institution, alongside all those very formal things you do, stakeholder engagements, rollout plans, those kind of things, why not run some metaphor workshops? Why is the thing we're developing like this or not like this? So thank you for listening. Enjoy the conference. I can't be there, I'm afraid, but I'm sure you have a great time. And you might just want to think for yourself what role of metaphor, those three that I mentioned, understanding defence, creativity is most meaningful for you. And how might you use metaphor in your practice? And I hope you enjoy the book and feel free to download it or play with a metaphor generator later on. Thanks.